A Dance with Darkness

by Jenna Wolfhart

Swallowing hard, I spun on my feet to face him. His eyes were so dark that my body shuddered in response. I took a step back, pressing up against the door, the metal knob digging into my skin.

  “I don’t even know where to start.” He was using that strange eerie calm voice again, the one that caused tremors to engulf my entire body. “First, you outright lied to your mother and me about why you were so late getting home today. And then I find out you went to a club last night?” His jaw rippled from where he clenched his teeth so tight that I could hear a grinding sound coming from his mouth. “That’s why your mother grounded you, isn’t it? I should have known it wasn’t for slacking off on your chores.”

  “It’s not her fault,” I said quickly. “I asked her to lie to you. I knew you’d be pissed if you found out.”

  “Damn right I’d be pissed. Here I am, paying your way and you’re out partying all night. Probably drinking and doing drugs. Although that doesn’t fucking compare to being a suspect for murder, now does it?”

  A suspect for murder.

  The words sounded alien to my ears even though I’d understood the truth of the officers’ visit myself. Swallowing hard, I took a step back, only to find I had nowhere to go. The doorknob dug deeper into my skin, the cool steel of it pressing through my thin t-shirt.

  “Well?” He stalked closer, so close that I could smell the hint of paprika on his breath. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  “Look, I’m sorry,” I said, heart thundering. “I shouldn’t have lied, I guess, but I was worried you’d overreact. Sometimes…” I took a deep breath and plowed forward. “Sometimes you can be a little intimidating when something goes wrong.”

  “Oh yeah?” He let out a chuckle. “Intimidating like this?”

  He pulled back his fist, and I squeezed shut my eyes. This was it. The moment he lost it and finally broke a bone.

  His fist slammed into the wall beside me, cracking through plaster and knocking right into the bricks underneath. The yell that erupted from his throat was so loud that my entire body began to shake. He’d punched the wall himself, but I knew what that yell meant. He was going to blame me for his own wound.

  He stumbled back, and blood poured from his knuckles.

  “Norah.” My mother rushed into the entry way and shoved her old suitcase into my shaking hands. “Go. Get out of here.”

  Tears sprung into my eyes, and I shook my head. “No. I’m not going to leave you here alone with him.”

  “I’ll be fine.” She jerked her head over her shoulder to stare at my step-dad, who was now wrapping his hand with one of my scarves on the coat rack. In an instant, my mother was close, and her breath was barely a whisper. She pressed a necklace into my hands, the one she’d worn almost every day of her life. “Take this and wear it always. Go to Bree’s apartment. I’ll let you know when it’s safe to come back.”

  She yanked open the door and gave me a push. I stumbled out into the hallway, my heart split in two. I wanted nothing more in the world than to get the hell out of here and never look back, but the look of hopelessness on my mom’s face kept my feet rooted to the spot.

  Until I heard my step-dad’s voice through the thin door. “That kid is trouble, and she needs to be shown it. If she ever steps back through that door, I swear to god I won’t hold back again. Don’t ever let her come back.”

  Chapter Five

  Bree wasn’t home. So, I snuck inside. She lived on the second-floor of a walk-up apartment building, and there was a fire escape ladder in the alley just behind it. For as long as I could remember, we kept a leaded rope hidden behind one of the dumpsters in case of emergency.

  This was an emergency if there ever was one.

  Once inside, I dropped the suitcase on the floor and plopped onto her tiny twin bed covered in Frozen sheets. Bree was a bit of a Disney fan, to say the least. I thought it was because she liked to imagine that she was a princess, though one of the ones who saved the day for themselves, not the kind who needed rescuing.

  No, it seemed that I was the kind who needed rescuing. I wished it wasn’t so.

  I must have fallen asleep like that because the next thing I knew, the overhead light was shining right in my eyes and Bree’s face hovered in front of me. A hand reached out, gently, and shook me.

  “Norah, what the hell is going on?” Her face blurred in before me as I blinked the sleep out of my eyes. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy to see you, but you have to admit it’s kind of strange that you’re in my bed.”

  “Sorry.” I pushed up on my elbows and gave her a look, one that spoke far more than any words ever could. Realization immediately dawned on her face.

  “It’s the asshole,” she said, matter-of-factly. “He finally snapped.”

  I blew out a heavy sigh. “It was like he’d transformed into a beast. He punched a hole in the wall and then threatened to do the same to my face.”

  She let out a low whistle. “So you left.”

  “So I left.” I gave her a sad smile. “Though it was my mom’s idea. I saw a flicker of something in her tonight. It gives me hope that maybe she’s finally seeing him for who he really is, but that’s scary in its own way. I don’t want him to hurt her.”

  “Maybe we should call the police and tell them what’s happened,” Bree said. “They might be able to charge him with something.”

  I groaned, closed my eyes, and flopped back onto the bed. “Oh, god. The police. For two precious seconds there, I’d forgotten about the police.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  With my eyes still shut tight, I said, “It’s a long, long, long story that is going to sound absolutely insane. Like, even more insane than the time I told you that a stranger who cornered me in the bathroom held all the answers to my panic attacks.”

  “You mean that time that was last night.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Alright. Scooch over. Sounds like I’m going to need to be sitting down for this one.”

  With a laugh, I moved over and the two of us packed tight into her bed. It reminded me of when we’d been younger, and Bree would stay over at my apartment every Friday night without fail. We grabbed pizza from the corner shop and settled in for a movie marathon. There’d be talk of boys and crushes, but mostly we liked to talk about our dreams, about where we wanted our lives to take us. Bree had always wanted to leave Manhattan while I’d always wanted to stay. To her, this wasn’t the concrete jungle made of dreams. She’d always thought there was more to the world than this tiny island. Sometimes, I thought she might be right.

  So, I told her my story. I started out slow, unsure of myself at first. I was more than a little worried what her reaction might be. I was basically admitting to imagining a beastly monster killing people in alleys. The police thought of me as a suspect. My step-dad (and maybe my mom) thought of me as a suspect, too.

  Would Bree think of me that way? I didn’t know what I would do if the only person I had left in the world turned her back on me.

  But when I was done telling my crazy tale, she wrapped her arms around me and pulled me close, the scent of lavender and roses swirling around us.

  “Well, that is one shit-tastic day. I think this calls for a pizza from Tony’s and some Ben & Jerry’s Rocky Road.”

  “Wait a minute.” I pulled back to meet her eyes. “You believe me? You don’t think I’m a killer?”

  She snorted. “Norah, you’re pretty much the opposite of a killer. Remember that I’ve seen you save spiders from your step-dad. Sneaking them out the window so he doesn’t have the chance to squash them.”

  “Okay, but there’s still the whole wolf monster in an alley thing.”

  “I’m not going to lie. I have no idea what to think about that.” She plopped back onto the pillows and shrugged. “It doesn’t make much sense. People don’t go around seeing wolf monsters attacking people in alleys. So, honestly? I don’t know what happened there. But what I do know is that you’re not responsi
ble. You saw something and that something killed Lars. Not you.”

  I loosed a breath, and my heart throbbed painfully in my chest. It felt so good to hear her say that, even though I knew I shouldn’t have doubted her. We’d been best friends for so long that I couldn’t remember a time when Bree wasn’t in my life. Her family felt like my family. Sometimes, they felt even more like my family than my own flesh and blood did.

  “Don’t look so worried, Norah.” She gave me a smile. “I’m on your side. Forever and always. You can stay here for as long as you need to. In fact, I insist upon it. I don’t want you going back to that apartment as long as your step-dad is still in it. This is your new home, for as long as you need it to be.”

  And with that, I let out a heavy sigh and did my best to feel relieved. I had somewhere to stay. I had someone who loved me, no matter what kind of crazy things I said I saw. But beneath the tiny taste of relief, something darker lurked. My strange panic attack. The four eerie guys who were following me around, wielding swords. The wolf I’d seen in the alley. All that blood.

  And that strange unsettling sensation that I was being watched. Even right now.

  The next day, I showed up to work fifteen minutes early. I was feeling a bit jittery to say the least, and I wasn’t entirely sure that the show would go on, so to speak. No one had called to tell me if the theatre was closed today, so I figured I’d better show up anyway. It was hard to imagine it being opened after what had happened, but I felt like I needed to be there. Just in case.

  The lights were off, but I could see Rachel through the glass door. She was scrubbing at the walls so hard that paint flecks were raining down on the floor. I knocked, and she jumped almost ten feet in the air. When she saw it was me, I expected her shoulders to relax. Instead, they tensed up even more.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked when she opened the door. Now that the light was shining on her face, I couldn’t help but notice the dark circles under her eyes and the frizzy hair that said she hadn’t bothered to go through her regular hair care routine. Rachel used at least five different types of conditioning products in her hair every morning. So, that was saying something.

  “I wasn’t sure if we were closed today.”

  “Well, we are,” she snapped. “And anyway, I won’t be needing you back when we do reopen.”

  My heart dropped. “What?”

  She rubbed her swollen eyes and sighed. “Look, I don’t know what happened last night, but I do know that the police seem really interested in your part in it. Truthfully, I find it a little bit odd myself. Your shift was over. Why were you in the alley?”

  I opened my mouth to try and explain, but she cut me off with a tutting noise I’d heard her use toward others but never toward me.

  “I just think it’s for the best if we end your employment here.”

  “You can’t possibly think that I killed Lars,” I said in a soft whisper as my eyes began to burn. I could understand the police thinking it. Hell, I could even understand my step-dad thinking it. But Rachel? She’d known me for years. Surely she didn’t think I was capable of something like that.

  “I don’t know what to think, Norah. I walk outside, and there you are standing over his body. You were there when you should have been home. Something isn’t right about that, and I hope to god it isn’t what it seems like. But until the cops prove otherwise, I would feel a lot better if you weren’t here.”

  I blinked and stepped back. Her words were a slap in the face. She was scared. Of me.

  “Okay, if that’s what you want,” I finally said.

  She gave a nod, and then she slammed the door right in my face.

  I was starting to understand Bree’s opinion on Manhattan. The city that dropped dreams from the top of the Empire State Building where they smashed onto the grimy concrete sidewalks. As I wandered through the gray-laden downtown streets, the buildings rising high on either side of me felt as though they were pressing in close, and the scent of hot steel swirling into my nose made my head spin.

  Everything was gray and hot and smelly. Even the cracks in the sidewalks didn’t have hints of green. Nothing about the city felt alive.

  I turned the corner and stopped short when I was confronted with an unfamiliar street. It didn’t look much different than any of the others I usually passed on my way around downtown. Two Chinese takeaway restaurants with their neon lights buzzing in the windows. A pawn shop, a bagel shop, and a hair salon that looked like it had seen better days.

  Problem was, I didn’t recognize any of them. Somehow, I’d gotten turned around. I’d been wandering aimlessly for at least an hour, and while I knew the city well, I’d ended up in a chunk of blocks I’d never explored.

  Footsteps echoed on the pavement behind me, and a strange eerie sensation settled over me. The feeling of being watched. With a slight hitch in my breath, I continued to move down the street and cast a furtive glance over my shoulder. A dark form hovered at the end of the block. The clouds overhead cast the streets into grey shadows, and he—or it—hovered beside the edges of a building, making it impossible to make out more than that.

  My heartbeat picked up speed. Was it that creature from last night? Or was it one of the strange guys who had clearly been following me around? Or maybe it was a cop, keeping an eye on their number one suspect.

  Whoever it was, I didn’t want to stick around to find out.

  My footsteps were heavy on the concrete, echoing in time with the thud of those that followed. A part of me felt the strong urge to take a look behind me again, but another part was too afraid to see. I just had to keep moving.

  When I rounded the next corner, I set off into a sprint and then rounded the next corner before the stalker could catch up. It was the only way I knew how to lose him. Breath heaving, I slowed and ducked beside a black wrought-iron railing that led up to the front landing of an apartment building. There were some trash cans just in front of me, blocking me from view of anyone passing by.

  Surely I had lost him. Surely he wouldn’t know I’d turned down this street.

  With my heart still racing, I grasped onto the railing and peered down the street in the direction I’d come. As soon as my fingers came in contact with the railing, my entire body was slammed by an overwhelming tidal wave of nausea. I jerked away, my head ringing, my chest heaving, my eyes blurring.

  This was worse than before. Way worse.

  And this time, I wasn’t getting any better. I grasped onto the railing to keep myself from falling over, and another wave of nausea pummelled me right in the gut. Darkness fled into my eyes, and I couldn’t hear anything in the world but a sharp, high-pitched ring.

  Maybe I really did need help. Maybe I was going crazy. Because nothing about this was normal.

  I struggled to stand, and my knees buckled underneath me. It sent me tumbling onto the grimy pavement, my elbows and knees slamming into the concrete. A cry of pain ripped from my throat, and a blinding pain shot through my arm. Breath heaving, all I could do was lie there, trying to squeeze the darkness out of my eyes. But it wouldn’t be gone. It consumed every part of me, and my grasp on the world began to fade. My eyes slid closed, and I couldn’t even move the tip of my finger.

  As the ringing began to subside, I heard the heavy thud of footsteps. They stopped right by my ear, and I screamed inside at myself. Move, Norah. Run.

  But I couldn’t move at all. I couldn’t even open my eyes.

  “Well, this isn’t ideal.” A male voice, one that wasn’t familiar at all, though the lyrical tone of it alarmed me. “You really need to stop touching iron. Otherwise, you’re going to end up in the hospital, and they won’t be able to fix you.”

  I tried to open my mouth to respond. My muddled thoughts were trying to form questions. Iron? Hospital? Who are you?

  I had no idea if I spoke the questions aloud.

  “Right, well. I can’t very well leave you in the middle of the street like this, can I? Especially not when you keep a
ttracting the attention of Redcaps.”

  Red caps? What the hell was that? Little men who wore red caps?

  The rustle of clothing sounded by my ear, and then two strong arms slid underneath my body. The pavement fell away, and a sweet, sweet smell filled my nose, one of fresh grass, honeysuckle and lilac, and the forest air after heavy rain. This strange man who had found me was now…carrying me. To somewhere. I started to struggle, desperately trying to crack open my eyes, but it was no use.

  He chuckled. “You know, the guys and I have been making a bet about who you belong to. I’m betting on Spring, of course, with those brilliant green eyes of yours. That blonde hair. But you do have a little fire in you, so Liam is convinced you’re his. And of course Kael thinks you’re his, what with the way the Redcaps are so drawn to you, though he doesn’t seem particularly happy about it. And Rourke? He couldn’t care less, but that’s an Autumn fae for you.”

  He was speaking gibberish. Pure nonsensical gibberish. English yes, but none of it made any sense. It was as if he’d jumbled up normal words and put them together in a way that made them sound as if they were a completely different language. Or maybe that was my scrambled brain.

  Regardless, I didn’t hear any more of it. There was something soothing in the soft sweet scent of him and his strong arms that gently held my body. It dulled the panic and fear that had been raging through my gut.

  Consciousness left me, and the next thing I knew, I was back in Bree’s bed. Alone. The only thing that made me feel as if I hadn’t imagined the whole thing was the single lilac flower stem left behind on the bedside table.

  Chapter Six

  “I’ve found the answer to all your problems.” Bree was practically bouncing up and down, even though it was stupid o’clock in the morning. The sun streamed in through the thin gauzy curtains. Apparently, today was the longest day of the year, which meant sunrise had happened at an ungodly hour.

  “Since when were you a morning person?” I asked as I shielded my eyes from the glare of the sun. “And also, I think we need to get you some thicker curtains.”